On Sunday at 1 p.m. ET the Cincinnati Bengals will travel to The Forest City to take on the Cleveland Browns. The game will be televised locally on FOX will be available for streaming on the FOX Sports App.
The Bengals are desperately hoping to avoid another disastrous opener like last year, when they lost to the lowly New England Patriots at home.
In fact, the Bengals would like to avoid their usual disastrous starts overall. Much emphasis has been placed this offseason on getting off to a hot start this year, which doesn’t make a ton of sense (who wants to get off to a bad start?), but it does when you consider the team’s recent history.
The Bengals are 1-11 in Weeks 1-2 under head coach Zac Taylor and 7-14-1 in all of his September games. So yes, this game is important to them.
The Browns, meanwhile, are really just hoping for competent quarterback play from Joe Flacco. Their quarterback situation this offseason has been the kind of mess that only the Browns can provide, and it seems like “when” not “if” they will eventually turn to one or both of their rookie quarterbacks (Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders).
Today’s inactives for the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns
Cincinnati Bengals Inactives:
WR Jermaine Burton
DT Howard Cross
TE Cam Grandy
DT McKinnley Jackson
C Matt Lee
CB Marco Wilson
Cleveland Browns Inactives:
DT Mike Hall
WR Gage Larvadain
OG KT Leveston
QB Shedeur Sanders
OG Zak Zinter
Quinshon Judkins will not be available for the Cleveland Browns
The Browns were able to sign a key draft pick on Saturday, inking second-round running back Quinshon Judkins to his four-year rookie contract. The No. 36 pick signed a fully guaranteed deal worth $11.389 million, which includes a signing bonus worth nearly $5 million.
Judkins was able to return to the team and get a deal done after domestic battery charges in Fort Lauderdale were dropped in August.
However, Judkins won’t be available for Sunday’s game against the Bengals.
The Cleveland Browns have a revamped defensive line
This offseason, the Browns resigned defense end Myles Garrett to a huge contract extension. But, they have some new additions and defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz likes what he sees so far.
“So, we have to really…we have to win up front, and that’s a big part of it,” Schwartz said. Guys like Mason Graham, we brought in here to give us interior rush, brought in guys like Maliek Collins to give us interior rush. You know, those are big things. We know they can help on the outside part of the field with guys like Myles (Garrett), they can chip, they can leave tight ends in the protection, but our ability to win inside in this game is going to go a long way to coming out with a win, because the ball comes out so fast, and shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and those guys are closer to the play. So, those guys need to step up for us. They need to win those matchups. And when we play our best, our D-line leads us there as our engine.”
The defense better improve if they hope to win a few games this year. They gave up 25.6 points per game in 2024, good for 27th in the NFL. That’s atrocious and there doesn’t seem to be an offense in town that can compensate for that.
“Well, the biggest thing is, our defensive line is much, much improved over last year and I think we’ve got back to our personality,” Schwartz continued. “You know, we saw it in…I think we started seeing it back in OTAs. We showed good signs of it in training camp and I think, even though we didn’t have our guys on the field a lot during preseason games, we saw it in the practices and we saw it in the preseason games, and that’s a huge, huge thing for us because it’s hard to win versus Ja’ Marr Chase and Tee Higgins and (Andrei) Iosivas and (Mike) Gesicki and those guys with a quarterback like Burrow.
The Browns defense has already started chirping
“It’s gonna be a tough, tough day for the O-line of the Bengals,” Delpit said.
Bengals’ wide receiver extraordinaire Ja’Marr Chase responded by saying, “Okay. Nice to know.”
Bengals and Browns: Today’s Inactives and How to Watch